Just over two months ago we kicked off our Get Social Tour to help social-business-minded individuals like yourself take their company to the next level. Nearly 1,500 trailblazers - from novices to experts - joined us across North America. From LA to Boston, we had a great time sharing and learning from customers, partners and prospective customers. Judging from attendee feedback, there's no doubt social is driving the biggest transformation in the enterprise in over a decade. To all of you who attended, thank you! Our hats are off to you for taking an important step toward leading your company to the new way to business.

Thanks also for your participation and contributions to the Get Social Community. If you haven't already done so, please cruise over to the community and check out some of the awesome presentations from Jive customers who shared their social business journey with audiences in Houston, Boston, Seattle, Washington DC and more!

Get MORE Social - a Special Offer to Attend JiveWorld10!

Join us in San Francisco this September for JiveWorld10, where nearly 600 social business thought leaders will convene to share and learn from the best of the best. This exclusive conference for Jive customers is open to Get Social attendees.You can choose from more than 40 unique track sessions, hear from business luminaries in our keynote sessions, join roundtable discussions with peers from a diverse cross-section of industries, and network with the largest social business community in the world.

If that's not enough to convince you to make plans now, a reminder that September in San Francisco is often cited as THE month to visit one of the world's most popular destinations.

For Get Social Alumni only: register before July 31 and receive an additional $100 off summer pricing. Enter the code GST2010JW.

If you attended one of our Get Social Tour stops, thanks again for Jiving with us. Safe travels where ever your summer travels may take you, and we look forward to welcoming you to San Francisco in September.

Last week we launched our Get Social Tour. We’re already riding high on the energy of our audiences, who are enthusiastically embracing Social Business Software (SBS) and the monumental change to business practices SBS can deliver.

On June 17th we’ll be in the ninth week of the tour, stopping in Philadelphia, where David Michael, Chief Information Officer at United Business Media (UBM), will be showcasing one of the strongest business imperatives for Social Business Software: unifying complex global business operations.

One of the world’s largest business media companies, UBM operates in 30 countries, providing information, data, and marketing services through 78 businesses in nine independently run divisions. UBM has grown to its current market position primarily through acquisitions, and they run their operations as a federated company.

They credit much of their success to preserving the autonomy of the companies they acquire. (UBM deliberately doesn't maintain a corporate-wide email directory.) However, decentralization proved to be a barrier in terms of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. And it was clear that a number of business synergies were going untapped.

How UBM leveraged Social Business Software to address those challenges is a hell of a story, and David tells it well. In a nutshell, they launched their first—and only—corporate wide software solution, a secure online community powered by Jive SBS. They’re still decentralized—and they still don’t have an email directory—but they’re working together in ways that they’ve never had an opportunity to do before

UBM told Nigel Fenwick, an analyst at Forrester, that there was an overwhelming agreement among employees that the Jive system has completely changed the culture of UBM ― from independent companies that didn’t talk to each other to a culture of collaboration where the first thought is to see if someone else has already tackled the same problem.

They also reported tangible ROI: hard savings where companies have joined together to negotiate better terms from suppliers and a rough estimate that 7% to 10% of usage has driven new innovation in the business leading to top-line or bottom-line growth.

Their deployment of Jive SBS – called the UBM Wiki – was recently highlighted in the company’s 2009 annual report. In fact, the report states:

“…the UBM Wiki has become an increasingly important tool for UBM’s management teams, enabling all of UBM’s employees to connect and collaborate for business benefit across geographies and operating companies.”

Since it was launched in September 2009, the community has grown to nearly 5,000 users working in 39 countries.

Coming out of 2009 and what Time magazine called "The Decade From Hell," most of us are looking forward to change – starting with a return to growth. Since marketing teams are often in the middle of architecting growth strategies, I'm excited to hear about the growth plans conference attendees have on tap for 2010 and beyond.

On many levels the economy today is far stronger than it was a year ago. However, problems still persist. As a result, we're all learning how to operate in a "stop and go" economy. There will be moments when we'll feel emboldened to make big bets, and other times when hitting the pause button will be in order.

Jive Social Business Software can provide great leverage in this "stop and go" economy. Our Jive Market Engagement solution helps organizations proactively monitor brand or product issues and competitive threats; enables quick collaboration on appropriate responses or interventions; and elevates and broadens the social conversations with a company. It's an awesome way to move faster in the moment of pain or opportunity.

Customers don't go online just to gripe. They also give invaluable information and insights that can lead to breakthroughs in innovation, product strategy, and support. Our recently introduced Jive Ideation module lets you channel the voices of your market and partners, score their ideas, and then pick off the best ones give the green light. And when you do, customers will both recognize and give you credit for listening and responding.

While I'm on the road this week, Team Jive is kicking off our 10-city Get Social Tour. Our first two stops are Los Angeles and Houston. Whether you're just starting on your Social Business Software journey or you’re an existing Jive customer, come join us. In typical Jive fashion, community is the theme as we showcase Jive customers, products and best practices to help you GO!

If you’re going to either the CMO Club Summit or the Forrester Marketing Forum, drop me a line @benkiker to connect at the event. If you can’t make it, follow my Twitter stream for nuggets from both conferences.

Charles Schwab has been a leader in financial services for nearly three decades, and today provides retail brokerage and banking services to millions of individuals - including me. In fact, my mortgage, home equity line of credit, brokerage and a credit card account are all with Schwab.

In a highly competitive market with no shortage of firms offering these products, the webcast is a unique opportunity to learn how Schwab continues to expand their market share. Just 18 months ago Schwab launched the Schwab Trading Community, powered by Jive Social Business Software (SBS), The community lets Active Trader clients share ideas, ask questions, and find ways to improve their trading. Clients can also network, socialize, and learn from other Active Trader clients, Schwab and third-party experts. You can check out the community via a terrific persona-based tour.

On average, a community participant trades at 360 trades per year versus 200 for non-participants.

An exploration of customer satisfaction showed that 85% surveyed were satisfied, and 51% were very satisfied.

Steve will be sharing some updated results with us on the webcast, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at Schwab's journey with Social Business Software.

Current and prospective Jive customers love our customer-focused webcasts for the insights and "tales from the front line" format. Join us on April 23rd for another look at how the world's leading brands Jive.

As was reported today by the Wall Street Journal's Emily Steel, Nestlé is the latest big brand to be publicly flogged on the social web. It's another example of responding poorly to what the article calls a "digital savvy protest." In determining their response, Nestlé unfortunately tore a page from the "What Not To Do" handbook:

While the jury is still out on whether they'll abandon ship, it's looking unlikely that Nestlé can retake the reigns without a more authentic and well-coordinated response on their part.

Nestlé’s beating appears to be in part the result of not enough people inside Nestlé having real-time visibility of the mushrooming social conversation about one of the company's business practices. Here's the thing about social media that many organizations continue to learn the hard way - it needs to be everyone's business, from the receptionist to the CEO. Unfortunately social media is often treated separately from the rest of the company - an "experiment" managed by two or three people. However, looking at Facebook's 400 million users and Twitter's 75 million users, that's asking a lot from a few!

But with pain often comes reward. Nestlé has an opportunity to reinvent its approach, to throw out the old playbook and start over. (For the record, I agree with Altimeter Group's Jeremiah Owyang’s comment to the Wall Street Journal that Nestlé continue with their Facebook fan page) And in doing so, other companies can learn and prepare for the moments of pain - and the moments of opportunity – that social media offers by taking the following steps:

Step One: Set up a virtual war room and processes that support real-time social media visibility and collaboration by a broad group of people with the organization.

Step Two: Authentically engage in the conversation in a way that best represents your brand while respecting the issues raised by your customers and stakeholders.

Step Three: Create multiple venues for people to learn more from you and stay connected.

Step Four: Respond to feedback quickly and honestly, with links driving the conversation back to the venues you've created.

Step Five: Once you've ridden out the storm, and given people the ability to express their concerns, turn the conversation around. Begin asking for more ideas, more ways to improve - and report back with some of the best ideas and your progress in making those ideas come to life.

This is the power of social media. And it's also the power of Jive. For a look into how you can more easily monitor and engage in the "big conversation" occurring about your brand, check out Jive Market Engagement Solution.

I've often quoted Walt Disney in presentations because his vision and passion for innovation resulted in entertainment experiences the world had never seen. And over half a century later the company he founded continues to deliver those experiences today.

Years ago I attended a seminar at Walt Disney World, and the cast member presenting asked the audience "how many of you are creative and have big ideas." We all froze, and no one raised their hand – perhaps we were all a bit intimidated by our surroundings.

I'm smiling looking back at the moment because the reality is we all have a big idea or two. Ideas can pop into our heads at practically any time. The bigger obstacle most organizations face is how help their teams "run an idea up the flagpole" so it has visibility to the right people at the right time. Employees of companies using Jive SBS have been easily sharing ideas for years because our solution has such powerful collaboration capabilities.

The other obstacle organizations face is how to capture ideas and feedback from the people who "write the check:" their customers. Every day customers share their opinions about products and services online, sometimes with the growing-in-popularity #fail on Twitter. They expect companies to listen, and they expect visibility into what actually happened with their feedback. In many cases, however, customers find themselves screaming into an echo chamber. Annoyed customers and missed opportunities don’t lead to big ideas and breakthrough experiences.

Today, we launched Jive Ideation to bridge between the natural innovation capabilities of Jive SBS with the ideas swimming around in conceivably your best untapped resource – the people who use your products every day. Jive Ideation helps you tap the power of crowd-sourcing and social networks to identify and nurture the best ideas for bigger outcomes.

Isobar interactive agency Molecular Inc. has been at the forefront of the ideation effort for years, helping its clients use crowd-sourcing to drive innovation efforts. We previewed Jive Ideation with Brett Borgeson, Engagement Director at Molecular who had this to say:

"These days, big brands are looking for ways to connect more directly with their customers, making the brand experience as intimate as possible. For brands reaching a mass audience, this is no small feat. Jive’s Ideation offering gives brands an efficient and powerful way to provide this kind of interaction with customers, allowing them an easy way to influence a company’s direction, or future product offering."

Innovation is a process, not an end game. Capturing your customers' (and employees') ideas will help send your current process into exciting new directions. To quote Disney again:

"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world."

I couldn't resist but think of the classic clip from Ellen Degeneres' stand up act when I was jotting down ideas for this blog. While I realize we may never completely say "farewell" to email, it's fascinating to see questions on the future of email make their way to center stage.

Back in October, Jessica Vascellaro of the Wall Street Journal started an online firestorm with her article, "Why Email No Longer Rules," generating a heated debate among readers, with 200 people commenting about whether or not email is in a death spiral.

By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

Here's the "wake up and smell the coffee" reality: Social Business Software is much better equipped than e-mail to handle the rich business conversations that are a reality of today's flattened world. And SBS is an incredible tool for leveraging the right people at the right time to help you work better. As we're fond of saying at Jive, "reply all" is no way to collaborate. The report went on to say, "social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities" and that changing demographics "will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications" over the next four years.

Social Business Software is an enterprise reality, but it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. Gartner also notes that IT-led efforts to "bolt-on" social features to existing platforms will result in a "more than 70 percent failure rate." No doubt that you will hear a lot about trying to make big IT implementations "more social," but it takes a lot more than adding a Facebook-ish interface or opening a support case from a tweet to make business social. Jive has built a native SBS platform over nine years of working closely with some of the largest - and most innovative - companies in the world. Companies who have their sights set on big outcomes, and are using Jive SBS today to achieve those outcomes.

If you're looking to move beyond "reply all," give us a call. We'd love to share more on how the world's #1 rated Social Business Software solution can make an immediate impact on your business.

When a Jive customer is prominently featured twice in the media in one week - including in The Economist - you know that customer is doing something special with Social Business Software!

That customer is the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and in this week's The Economist magazine you'll find the DIA featured in the magazine's special report on social networking in the workplace. A-Space, the DIA's Jive-powered secure social networking platform, connects over 14,000 members of the U.S. intelligence community. We're thrilled to see A-Space program manager Ahmad Ishaq and his colleagues highlighted for the work they're doing to break down information silos in an innovative application of Social Business Software. And that second story I mentioned on the DIA? OhMyGov this week included A-Space in their list of top government social networks. If you’d like to learn more about A-Space, join us for a live webcast on February 10th. I'll be speaking with Ahmad about the DIA's journey with Social Business Software, focusing on topics including techniques for increasing adoption of enterprise 2.0 technologies.

We are also thrilled to see The Economist covering what we’ve been seeing over the past year – Social Business Software has become mainstream in business. Gone are questions like "are these technologies a good fit for the workplace?" Now the questions include "how fast can I implement Social Business Software?" as companies look to impact everything from generating new product ideas faster to compressing product life cycles to shortening sales cycles and of course improving customer satisfaction rates. Or, in the case of the DIA, how many lives are saved. As reporter Martin Giles points out in the article, “… In the corporate world such hoarding (of information) leads to lost profits. In the world of intelligence it can lead to lost lives.”

Social Business Software has come a long way from being seen as simply "Facebook for business." For more proof points, just check out the announcement we made earlier this week on Toshiba America Business Systems (TABS) and their implementation of Jive Social Business Software (SBS) to improve channel performance.

From all of us at Jive, congratulations to our friends at the DIA and to the hundreds of global organizations - including more than 25% of the Fortune 100 - who are putting Jive SBS to work in transforming their organizations. We're honored to be your business partner, and to help you set the pace for business for the next decade.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, the article Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones captures one of the biggest questions being bandied about in marketing organizations the world over - how much, or how little do customers want and need via their cell phones? And perhaps the even messier question – how on earth does one go about catering to and developing for the multitude of different devices?

Delivering a rich mobile experience really boils down to two approaches – a thin, basic application that stretches across a multitude of platforms, or a more robust approach, developing rich experiences that tap into the benefits and unique offerings of each device and platform.

As I mentioned in the article, Jive truly believes the magic happens when you're able to go deep with functionality. Does it take longer to develop? Of course. But just ask our customers: it’s worth the wait. Take for example our recent launch of Jive SBS for the iPhone. Because we developed a native application, we deliver a gorgeous interface that takes full advantage of the iPhone, giving users the ability to publish blogs, upload photos, find people easily within Jive, and publish updates with geo-location.

But don’t worry, we’re not stopping there. 2010 will be another year of jaw dropping innovation for Jive, so get ready to be wowed.

If you've ever been involved in planning or producing a major public event, you can probably relate to the “all hands on deck” call that goes out in the 30 days prior to the event. There are often hundreds of "to do's" as the clock clicks down to showtime.

Fortunately, we crossed off one of the big "to do's" over the weekend when we tallied up the registrations for JiveWorld09 and realized the conference is sold out! We announced this in a press release today, and I wanted to share some additional comments today in JiveTalks.

Before I continue, a huge THANK YOU to Jive customers, prospective customers and partners from all of us at Jive! In the year of the "non-conference" - and in an environment where every travel dollar is scrutinized - we appreciate this incredible vote of confidence. We’ve had customers tell us their budgets restricted them to only one event this year – and they chose ours. That has everyone on Team Jive even more motivated to deliver a high-impact program that arms conference participants with the information they need to move even more aggressively with their Social Business Software agenda.

We’ve started a waiting list because there’s always the possibility that someone who previously registered won’t be able to join us. If you’re interested in attending JiveWorld09 and didn’t register, I encourage you to add your name to this list as soon as possible. We’ll start at the top and work our way down when we have an open slot. We’ll also be providing select conference materials through the JiveWorld09 community site.

And if you can’t join us in person this year, you can still participate in video form. Check out the contest we’re holding and share what it means personally to you and your organization to “Jive Together.” Entries will be shown during the conference as a video mashup.

We’re in the midst of announcing some of the most significant innovation to ever come out of Jive, and we’re just beginning. We’ll have much more to share at JiveWorld09, and I predict it will provide even more inspiration to lead a Social Business Software revolution in your organization.

As the newest member of Jive's executive team, I spent a good part of my summer Jiving with our incredible customers: a powerful, forward-thinking community that's leading the global shift toward a social business mandate. And I have to share an "ah-hah" moment I had from those conversations: our customers don't just work inside Jive, they love Jive! There's a passion for Jive unlike any other software solution I've been associated with.

And it's really showing up in the traction we're getting for our inaugural community conference: JiveWorld09. Registration is so strong, so early, that we'll most likely be ending registrations next week - a full month before the conference. I'm not complaining, mind you! In the year of the "non-conference" I'm thrilled our customers are making an exception to tight travel budgets and taking time away from the office to join us in San Francisco.

I'm sure it helps that this not your run-of-the-mill conference around a run-of-the-mill product - and that this is the first opportunity you and your fellow Jivers have had a chance to come together. Just wait until you see who's going to be there: we have a jaw-dropping roster of Jive customers participating as speakers and panelists.

Working inside Jive takes a variety of forms, and we're holding a video contest to encourage our customers to share what it means personally to them and their organization to “Jive Together.” The results will be shown at JiveWorld09 as video mashups and, from what I've seen to date it's nothing short of amazing how innovative our customers are.

BTW, you may have seen the recent blog post that Jive's CEO - Dave Hersh - and his family are moving to the Bay Area. On behalf of the small (but energetic) group of Bay Area Jivers,we'd like to welcome Dave and his family to the Golden State. We look forward tohaving them - and their discretionary income - help us chip away at California's budget deficit.

As Jive’s CMO, I have the privilege of blogging about our newest offering, the Jive Market Engagement Solution. I'm confident this solution is going to rock the world of marketers everywhere!

Usually we blog on a new product concurrent with issuing the press release announcing that product. However, in the final moments Monday of preparing the news for release, my time was focused on another developing story at Jive: our first community conference – JiveWorld09 – is on the verge of a sell out!

Now that we’ve creatively added more capacity to JiveWorld, I’d like to share some thoughts about yesterday's announcement and why I'm so excited.

First, the facts: our Market Engagement Solution is a new product that combines the power of buzz monitoring with Jive Social Business Software (SBS). We’ve selected Radian6 – a leading social media monitoring platform for understanding "the big conversation" occurring in the social web – and tightly fused it with Jive SBS. Marketers bring observations from Radian6 into a “Market Space,” a new element of Jive SBS. There, marketers add other observations – perhaps a tweet or blog post – and socialize those observations with colleagues. Think of it as our version of the "War Room," where the right people come together at a moment’s notice. Once a plan of attack is established, actionable Viewpoints are published to help organizations move faster in the moment of pain or opportunity.

And because the solution is available via the cloud, there’s no need to wait behind other initiatives for IT resources.

The time is now for this approach as marketers are in a lather about the increasing velocity of social conversations and are struggling to stay on top of those conversations. When we were preparing for press interviews - more on the market reaction in a moment - our PR team reminded me of the classic I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel go to work in a candy factory. They manage at first, but you're probably smiling now as you remember how quickly they were buried in a speeding conveyer belt of chocolates. Like Lucy and Ethel, marketers are getting buried in alerts and “helpful” heads-up emails as yet another co-worker asks “I saw some customers twittering that they are dying to have feature X in the product. Should we do it?” And as those emails circulate throughout an organization, people are reminded that “Reply All” is not effective for collaborating on a firestorm or real-time, online sentiment.

At Jive, we are electrified by the responses we’re getting from customers, and the market reaction has been equally electrifying:

As always, thanks for taking time today to Jive with us. If you haven’t already done so, please register now for JiveWorld. Even though we increased capacity, we’re still limited in the number of additional registrations we can accept and we don’t you want to miss out on seeing Jive's Market Engagement Solution – and all the other powerful capabilities of Jive SBS – up close and personal in San Francisco!

When I joined Jive, the team was assessing the potential of convening the Jive community for an in-person event. My initial reaction was excitement tinged with concern. After all, with travel budgets being slashed, 2009 appeared to be the year of the "non-conference".

But once I became a Jiver and delved more deeply into the company, I saw existing customers using Jive to push corporate performance to new limits, despite a brutal business climate. I also saw a jaw-dropping roster of new customers propelling our record growth and contributing valuable insights to the Social Business Software dialogue.

There's every reason to believe that Social Business Software is at a tipping point, which is why hosting this community conference this year makes absolute sense. It's our way of rewarding customers for their unwillingness to be complacent in the face of a precarious marketplace. The best way to thank you is to host a community conference designed to empower our customers to achieve even greater business outcomes.

That's why JiveWorld09 is anything but your run-of-the-mill conference. Sure, you'll hear from Jive, but only because we're focusing our presentations around arming you for success. But the main focus is on you and your fellow community members, who will share the stage with Jive equally if not moreso. Most important, JiveWorld09 is about creating and capitalizing on the energy that comes from being together with our customers. Learning, sharing, questioning, experimenting, discovering -- JiveWorld09 is where you'll do all of this and more -- together.

We recognize how much everyone is watching their budgets right now. We also recognize that you may need to "go the extra mile" for approval to attend. That's why we're pulling out all the stops to make participating not only worth it, but also affordable.

We selected a city (San Francisco) that's home to many Jive customers. It also features an abundance of low-cost air options with new carriers serving both San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International airport.

We selected an awesome property - the W Hotel San Francisco - and negotiated a great rate of only $195 a night.

The second day of the conference wraps up just after lunch, so those of you flying from the central or east coasts can travel home without incurring an additional hotel night.

We've also kept the conference fee low -- very low, we believe for the value you'll receive -- and are offering an unbelievable discount if you register by August 28.

Plus, if you're selected as either a speaker or an award winner, we'll waive the conference fee (hint hint, apply for either -- or both!).

We're looking at every aspect of the conference agenda to ensure you leave armed with the information you need to inject Social Business Software at a more strategic level into your business. The timing is perfect, especially as many companies are moving into the planning cycle for 2010 and updating strategic plans to to not only survive, but to thrive, in the years ahead. And we're confident you'll Thrive on Jive. To register now or learn more, visit the JiveWorld09 site.

I'd love your ideas on how to make our inaugural JiveWorld a tremendous success, and look forward to seeing you in San Francisco.